Fine. Assange stands on embassy grounds while the investigators stand outside embassy grounds and they talk.

Hasn't Assange done so with journalists?

You need to concede a lot of the fighting going on in Africa too.

As for Imperial Japan, the emperor worship was far more than a sales technique. The leadership were true believers. The god status of their emperor, their head of state, made all other heads of state vastly inferior, all other peoples vastly inferior, the wishes of all others vastly inferior. Imperial Japan's "superiority" was firmly based in their religion, it inspired their "divine destiny" to rule vast parts of Asia.

As for Naziism, it manifested religious overtones and included efforts to create an alternative religious experience for the people that predated the start of the war. Early on they absolutely recognized the power of religion and were creating an alternative one to displace christianity. It was far more than a simple method of selling the war. Its religious-like tenets, mythologies, religious knights were also part of their belief in their "superiority", in their "destiny" to rule Europe. It really was a "religion", not an established one, an emerging one and thankfully a failed one.

And now that you inspired further thought we have the communist states of Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's Communist China. Here too we have a religious-like activity, a worship of the state. Again, not a sales method but a fervent belief system. I suppose you could counter with all sort of euphemisms regarding Stalin's and Mao's states but at its heart we will also find a worship of the state, a faith based belief system, numerous religious-like behaviors. The newness of such belief systems don't really undermine their religious-like nature.

In short you seem to be focused on established religions providing inspiration. I'm focused on a "religious" belief system being behind the motivations for conflict. I think the former is a more valid basis for examining the influence of religion on conflict.

But for historical purposes it makes sense. Shouldn't we be digitizing as much of antiquity and vanishing cultures/languages as possible. Note that its a pretty bad time for the physical preservation of antiquities in the cradle of civilization right now.

It would be helpful to academics to have such languages in a textual format not merely an image format.

You almost had a point until you suggested that current wars in the middle east and africa don't have a major religious component. Then you lost credibility. Then I started to rethink the earlier ones and began to note that religion existed their too. For example the Nazis in-fact were trying to create an alternative religion with Naziism, complete with its own tenants of faith, saints, mythologies, etc. Imperial Japan's military justified everything done as service to the living-god emperor. So yeah, religion has helped give us many of the wars you claim otherwise.

Why the blame? Apparently incompetence. Why was he putting an archive out there that included legitimate operations and agents, why not confine his archive to docs exposing the domestic mass surveillance programs? He overshared.

Actually there is a much more important 3rd question. Was it necessary to do a mass dump of NSA files that went far beyond mass domestic surveillance in order to bring that mass surveillance to the attention of the people?

The answer is a definitive NO. Snowden overshared. He may have inadvertently harmed legitimate intelligence programs and agents. He should have pruned his dump and kept it on topic.

Android is not Linux based. It is Linux hosted. Android is effectively another operating system, an Android developer or user does not see Linux at all. In theory Linux could be replaced by BSD and users and nearly all developers would not notice or care. As for the few developers doing native code, many are making Posix calls, not anything Linux specific, so many of these would not care either.

Why bother taking screen space from more useful info? That small minority that cares can check the software's website before download or read the license before installation if they are not already familiar with software.

More like an anti-proprietary fetish, or political extremism, than anything to do with morality. If a person chooses to use a proprietary program there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

No. The WMD possibility was a real concern. Things that you seem not to be considering: Post Gulf War Saddam was actively hostile to the US. He fired on US aircraft enforcing a no fly zone occasionally, this zone being another thing he agreed to in the cease fire. Saddam actively supported terrorists, they may not have been al-Qaeda but they were groups that had attacked and killed Americans. Beyond support he also provided sanctuary to foreign terrorists who had killed Americans and allowed them to live in Iraq. All this and more led President Clinton to state that it is the policy of the United States to remove Saddam from power.

Also as the cited New York Times journalist (cited a couple of posts up) found in her investigation into how everyone got Iraq wrong in the days leading to the invasion, some of the things that turned out to be true included: the UN reported 1,000 tons of chemical agents were unaccounted for and WMD was eventually found (years after the invasion and initial searches) and the sarin nerve agent was more potent than the US thought Iraq had the capability to produce and former UN inspectors have stated that Saddam planned to reconstitute WMD programs once the UN signed off on Iraq and left.

Things are far more complicated than you suggest. Yes, actual motivations for war and how war is sold to the public often differ. WMD was oversold. However as even Clinton had stated Saddam had to go, he was an ongoing threat, and in a post 9/11 environment his antics would just no longer be tolerated. 9/11 changed the US' level of tolerance.

Which is basically what I said in my next sentence. "Working out the internal politics" included al Maliki working out a deal with Parliament, working out a framework to present the deal to the Iraqi public, etc.

No, al Maliki said he needed this time. Numerous foreign policy experts have criticized the Obama admin for forcing Iraq to take a public position on immunity before the internal Iraqi negotiations and planning had taken place. The experts considered this one of the Obama admins major blunders.

No. The actual point is that there is an agreement on the departure of the invasion and occupational forces. For diplomatic and political reasons that era needed a fixed and unambiguous end. This agreement, for the era of occupation, largely covered a timeframe on the earlier President's watch and only briefly stretched into the next President's watch.

Also for diplomatic and political reasons a separate deal was required with a fully sovereign and independent Iraq for future US forces that would participate in anti-terror, training, support, liaison, etc. The time frame for this era of cooperation was entirely on the next President's watch so both the US and Iraqi government agreed that this future President should negotiate the deal.

You are fundamentally misinformed. Both the US and Iraq expected the next US President to negotiate a *new* agreement for the status of US involvement for 2011 and beyond. The old agreement was a formal diplomatic end to invasion and occupation. For political and diplomatic reasons the new agreement had to be separate from the old.

The US requirement for immunity was not a surprise. al Maliki has stated that he needed time to negotiate with Parliament and time to formulate a framing for the Iraqi public. The US failed to give him this time, forced him to take a pubic position prematurely. al Maliki had also stated that US offer was insufficient and many of those in the Iraqi government were not willing to take the political heat of immunity for such an ineffectual token force. That a much better deal would be required to go down that path.

You fail to understand the events. There was no surprise in the US requirement. However in the post sovereignty post occupation arab spring environment there was great political reluctance for Iraq to grant immunity. al Maliki had said that he needed time to negotiate with parliament and time for the government to frame things in an acceptable way to the public. The Obama admin sabotaged these efforts by demanding a public statement by Iraq on immunity before such internal negotiations and planning had taken place, forcing the Iraqi government to state no immunity for the moment.

No, it only illustrates that I am discussing Iraqi security and the US involvement in that. The transnational problem of ISIS is a different topic.

You are grossly misinformed. US military officers have reported al Qaeda in Iraq reported to al Qaeda leadership that no more fighters should be sent, that they were beaten in Iraq. Plus the Obama admin thought Iraq so stable and unlikely to fall back into chaos in 2011 that they believed on 3,000 to 5,000 US troops would be needed in Iraq.

No, it was the nightly news. Convoys of fighters and heavy weapons rolling down the highway were ISIS' trademark video. The vulnerability such a movement is demonstrated by earlier videos from the first Gulf War, a stretch of road that the news referred to as the highway of death.

You are grossly misinformed. The Bush admin was not optimistic about the need for US support in 2011 and beyond. They merely left it to the next administration to work out the details. If anyone was over optimistic is was the Obama admin that thought Iraq was unlikely to fall into chaos and only offered 3,000 - 5,000 troops for anti-terror, training, support, liaison, etc.